Examples:

Anime And Manga

Josuke from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has the power to restore anything and everything to a previous state...except himself.

In the same part, Yoshikage Kira gains a power called Bites the Dust, which will automatically kill anyone who uncovers his real name. Since he's trying to hide from the heroes, it's extremely useful. However, the power must be "set" on someone, and since it requires removing Killer Queen from himself to set it, Kira can't make himself the focal point.

At one point in Maou-Jou De Oyasumi, the princess tries casting a high level sleep spell on herself. It knocks out everyone in the castle except her.

Comic Books

The deformed mutant Masque, from the Marvel Universe, has the power to alter anyone's facial features, save for his own. This served to the irony that he couldn't fix his own deformed appearance, leading to bitterly and sadistically deforming other Morlocks to enforce loyalty. Later appearances avert this into full on Voluntary Shapeshifting territory.

In the book The Candy Shop War, magicians can't usually use their magic on themselves for a number of reasons. The most prominent is that magic works better on the young, and by the time you're old enough to understand magic, you're not a kid anymore.

In the Discworld novel Sourcery, it was mentioned that the only thing the wizards couldn't magically improve- even after they started recieving power from the Sourcerer- was themselves (or at least, not for more than a few seconds).

In the Spellsong Cycle, magicians cannot cast magic on themselves. They can, however, cast magic on each other.

In The Wheel of Time series the Aes Sedai cannot use their powers (mostly Healing) on themselves. This is explained by the magic needing to be "weaved" and "applied" to someone. In this way its impossible to to lay a weave upon yourself as you would be unable to properly see it. It's a pity they couldn't use mirrors or bend light or something to get around that ... other than that, it's a pretty consistent rule: there's an anecdote about an Aes Sedai whose mental block (Wilders often acquire these when learning to keep a lid on their powers on their own) was that she couldn't touch the Source with her eyes open. Naturally, this made her rather ineffective.

Inverted with Feruchemists from Mistborn. Their Equivalent Exchange-based powers only work on themselves - Feruchemy can't be used directly to alter someone else's abilities. Feruchemy's sister magic system Allomancy is similar, though it has some "external" powers that work on others, while the third system in the triad, Hemalurgy can power up anyone so long as the person actually performing it is willing to pay the price.

This is the last obstacle to becoming an orah in The Quest of the Unaligned. You can never take light magic for yourself, only give it to someone else.

Tabletop Game

In early editions of Dungeons & Dragons, some monsters (archdevils, efreeti and noble djinn) could grant another character's wishes, but not wish for things themselves.

Inverted in Mage: The Awakening: casting a spell on oneself is always easier than casting it one someone else. For example casting a protective Mage Armor spell requires two points in any of the Arcana, but casting the same spell on someone else requires three points.

In Magic: The Gathering, the creatures nicknamed "lords" by the players buff all other creatures of a certain species/class but don't buff themselves. This was actually averted in the early days of Magic, but players kept forgetting that it applied to the lord, leading Wizards to change the design.

War Craft III has Holy Light and Death Coil, very powerful healing spells which can only be used on other units. (Though to compensate, the Paladin can become invulnerable and the Death Knight can absorb the health of a nearby friendly unit.) Some spells also don't work on the caster (but do if from another caster) like Invisibility and Anti-Magic Shell.

Mostly averted in World of Warcraft, any spell which can buff a target can buff the caster (indeed some default to buffing the caster if there is no target).

A few exceptions exist where the caster can only cast a buff on someone else, but the effects of the buff also benefit the caster. One example would be Focus Magic, which increases the target's Critical Hit chance by 3%, and when they score one increases your own. A fairly common variant is a spell cast on the casters minion by default that directly or indirectly benefits the caster as well. And then there's the Paladin's Hand of Sacrifice, which transfers damage from someone else to the Paladin. Even when Glyphed to remove the "To the paladin" part or when used by Retribution Paladins for it's second effect of dispelling debuffs, it can't be cast on the Paladin themselves.

With the introduction of Deathknights, Death Coil returns as a spell that can be used to damage enemies or heal friendly undead, most commonly the Deathknights Ghoul minion. However, they can temporarily become undead themselves and use this spell to heal themselves.

the Shadow Hunter's ultimate spell is Big Bad Voodoo, which turns every friendly unit in range invulnerable except the caster. Meaning that for the duration of the spell, the enemy can only attack him.

City of Heroes naturally has the support powersets mainly only able to buff others, though some can also buff themselves; sometimes while debuffing or damaging enemies in the process, sometimes in a power that affects all of their teammates, including themselves. The reasons for this are obvious; even two buffers looking after each other can be a very effective team.

In Team Fortress 2, while the Medic can't heal or buff himself with his Medigun, doing so still boosts his own regeneration rate; additionally, when Ubered, both himself and his Uber target(s) are invincible.

Very slightly averted with the Kritzkrieg, which allows the Medic to heal himself with the taunt, although it's much slower than the usual healing rate and leaves him wide open to attacks. However, its Ubercharge effect completely plays this straight since the Medic cannot take advantage of it.

The Engineer benefits less from his dispenser than other classes, as metal generation is limited while ammo is not, even though the two are interchangeable when it comes to picking up dropped weapons and ammo boxes.

In Shadow Hearts: Covenant, Lucia's oils will affect the three other party members but not her. In Shadow Hearts: From The New World, Ricardo's songs work the same way.

In Final Fantasy VI, Sabin can use his "Mantra" and "Spiraler" Blitzes to heal his teammates, but not himself (using Spiraler actually kills him).

In Final Fantasy XIV most buffs are usable on any party member (and some even on people outside the party), but there are a few exceptions. The Arcanist skill Eye for an Eye for example can only be cast on another, although Scholars can subvert this by spreading the buff to everyone in range with Deployment Tactics. Similarly, the Astrologian ability Time Dilation, which increases the duration of Astrologian-cast buffs, cannot be cast on the user.

Flonne has a skill named "Power of Love", which recovers the HP of her allies, but not her own.

Other spells in the game can be cast on anyone of the player's choosing.

Pokémon Black and White introduces Heal Pulse, which heals a target other than the user. It's made for double battles.

In zOMG!, the strongest and most stamina-effective heal is Wish... which can't be used on the user. Previously, this was also the case with Rock Armor, which has since been changed.

The Medkit of X-COM: UFO Defense is a remarkable device. It allows a medical novice to diagnose and treat any injury. Oddly, though it isn't possible to point this medical marvel at your own leg, only at other people.

In Fire Emblem Awakening (and most games in the franchise) staffs can't heal the user, except the Balmwood Staff, which has to be used as an item to do so. The Rally skills are especially egregious: you can potentially boost everyone in the team EXCEPT the user.

Fates averts staffs not healing the user with a skill from the Butler/Maid called "Live To Serve" which restores the healer's HP based on the amount of HP restored to the recipient. And with reclassing, healers that can get the class can regain lost HP. This is also the extent of Kaden's personal skill which recover half HP to the healer.

In Eternal Sonata, Claves' only healing move, Unicorn Horn, cannot target herself. (By contrast, Polka starts with a move that can target herself if there's no party member in the vicinity who needs it more. She later learns Earth Heal, which cannot target her, but it only takes a Light Special Move slot if you choose to put it there. Most other healing move don't have this limitation... particularly the ones that heal all.)

Empire Earth: Both types of hero unit have an ability that only works on other units and not themselves: the Warrior hero causes friendly units to take half damage, while the Strategist heals them. However, they are immune to their and each other's effects, though they have very high health, regeneration and can still be healed at a hospital to make up for it.

In PAYDAY: The Heist, players can equip "crew bonuses" to, well, provide bonuses to their crew - things like increased health, damage, ammo capacity, et cetera. Since these bonuses only apply to the player's crewmates and not the player himself, the meta is for a full four-man crew to have two players equip one bonus and the other two equip another, so the full crew can benefit from both bonuses.

The Advocate from Nexus Clash can grant enormous bonuses to other characters at the price of most of their Character Points, but doesn't benefit from any of these buffs itself. There is no upper limit to the number of other characters who can get buffs, making a sufficiently well-developed Advocate a case of sacrificing personal power for the power to alter the course of the whole war.

Western Animation

As per the page quote, the witch doctor Facilier in The Princess and the Frog mentions this as a reason he has to work his schemes through others. However, his living shadow can manipulate objects for him, and he can cast illusions that affect other people to further his own goals, so long as it's what they think they want.

In Aladdin and its sequels/spin-off TV series, the Genie's power is much greater when granting wishes for others than when doing things for himself. The former lets him wield "super-phenomenal cosmic power", while the latter only lets him use "semi-phenomenal nearly-cosmic power."

One really powerful individual with chaos powers was described as a "genie who could grant his own wishes." This character provokes an Oh, Crap! from Genie.

Since Genie is a free genie, technically everything he does is for himself rather than granting the wishes of others. Which explains why he is weaker.

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